Arizona Wildcats at Stanford Cardinal
Saturday, 11/6/2010, 8:00 PM EST, TV: ABC
Opening Point Spread: Stanford -7
Current Betting Line: Stanford -9
Opening Total: 55.5
Current Total: 56
Current Moneyline: Stanford -335 / Arizona +285
Arizona is enjoying its best season since the 1998 team went 12-1 and is coming off a 29-21 win at UCLA last Saturday. “I thought we played relatively well if you take out a couple of plays defensively,” said head coach Mike Stoops. “Besides that, we had pretty good control of the game.” The offense accumulated 583 yards in offense, which was their eighth-best total in history, on a season-high 88 plays from scrimmage in the contest. The Wildcats bring in a five-game road winning streak and will face a Cardinal club that is riding a five-game home winning streak of its own. This game against Stanford will be Arizona’s second against a ranked team this year, beating then-No. 9 Iowa 34-27 in Tucson in mid-September. Overall, the program is 14-47-1 against top 10 opponents. The team is 4-3 ATS this season and the NCAA football lines page has them listed as a nine-point underdog.
The Wildcats know that the game may be won in the trenches with their sixth-rated rushing defense against a club that is 12th nationally in running the football. Head coach Mike Stoops is decent in getting his troops up for games during November and December, posting a 13-10 record in those final two months. It’s not a great record, but half of those contests (12) have been against nationally-ranked competition. Quarterback Nick Foles is expected back after missing the last two games with a sprained right knee and he was the Pac-10 leader in passing at the time in averaging 305.8 yards per game. He combined with Stanford QB Andrew Luck to put up 1,137 yards of offense in a Wildcats’ 43-38 win last season.
Stanford is coming off an impressive 41-0 win at Washington on Saturday and knows it will likely not reach its 42.4 points a game scoring average against an Arizona club that is seventh in the nation in scoring defense at 14.4 points. If the Cardinal beat the Wildcats on Saturday, it would be the program’s best start since 1970. Offensively, the team is led by Luck, who is being endorsed by head coach Jim Harbaugh for some hardware talk. “Let’s open up the Heisman discussion a little bit,” he commented. “This Andrew Luck is a great, great football player.” He has quarterbacked a unit to eight straight games of 30 points or more and the team needs to average only 25 points in its final five games to break the single-season school record for points. Stanford is 14-9 ATS versus conference opponents.
The Cardinal are meeting the Wildcats with both teams ranked for the first time in series history and the game will be televised nationally. Stanford trails the all-time series, 11-14-0, but has won two of the last three games in the series. Beating this team at home is a difficult task for any opponent, as Harbaugh has led them to a 15-2 mark in home games since the final home contest of the 2007 season. Don’t expect a slow start in this one from the hosts, as they have outscored their eight opponents by a 205-68 margin in the first half.
Bettors may endorse the Wildcats due to their 8-3-1 ATS mark as an underdog of 3.5-10 points, while the Cardinal are 5-2 ATS in the last seven meetings.
Don’t even think about betting on Saturday until you get the services of the college football handicappers at Maddux Sports on your side!
